This one was a killer
He is a decent programmer. Not phenominal, but on the upper bounds of good. He is very good at math, has a math degree, has good visual skills, good presentation, and wanted to be in management.
He had good client interaction skills, decent at teasing out what they really wanted. Good at presenting the solution and getting an agreement of what to do next.
He has 2 mode of operation, though. Micromanage where he lays out the code for you, step by step, or wide open bluesky, figure it out yourself.
When he blueskied, people would get confused. If he didn't take into account certain limitations, or though he did and then didn't communicate well enough how to deal with it, programmers involved in that project would believe him to not understand the difficulties and then would stonewall. He typically DID understand. In my case, when he didn't, I'd corner him for a while, shake it into his head, and then we'd come up with a solution. Other people didn't, so their projects would be more difficult since they didn't have his input when needed.
When he micromanaged, that was a little painful. No 2 coders will code the same way, so when he would layout the underlying data structures of a project, and they did not match how I was designing, none of his input had any value since it was shaped around the data structures. So I'd beat him up to the next level, and we'd work from there.
He was great at working with various departments in the company, finding out how the whole organization would do better, and working in that direction.
But internally, dealing with people who stonewalled or took 10 times to get something right, he could be harsh. Not insulting or abusive. Just short. He hated when people wasted time. Their's or his. He felt the clock ticking away. Deep down, felt it.
But so do I. Time isn't just money. Time is life. If I spend 10 minutes writing this post, I have made a choice to SPEND a limited piece of my life doing it. It is a piece of my life that I will never get back. He felt the same way, that when other people were wasting his time, they were costing him a bit of his life that could be better spent doing something else.
So we got along well. We didn't waste each other's time, we were productive, we got things done, we had fun.
Gonna miss him.
